The Law and Politics of Battlestar Galactica

privacyprof writes "Fans of the show Battlestar Galactica might be interested in our interview with writers and producers Ron Moore and David Eick. Three law professors at the blog Concurring Opinions have an hour-long interview with Moore and Eick about the legal, political, moral, and economic issues raised by the show. The interview is available in audio files; alternatively, people can read a transcript of the interview (Part I) and (Parts II and III). Part I examines the lawyers and trials in the show, how torture is depicted, as well as how the humans must balance civil liberties and security. Part II examines politics and commerce. It explores how the cylon attack affected the humans' political system, and it examines how commerce works in the fleet. Part III examines issues related to cylons, such as the humans' treatment of cylons, how robots should be treated by the law, how the cylons govern themselves politically."

Comments

Re:There's a great article

[armareum]

Most of you will be warely of a link from an AC, but definitely avoid this one!

it's interesting to see

[circletimessquare]

people seeing a need for balance on these issues in the abstract

but in real life, i bet a lot of these people who see a need for balance turn into kneejerk privacy fundamentalists or kneejerk security fundamentalists

there are limits on everything folks, even [insert principle you hold most dear]

Re:it's interesting to see

[JesseMcDonald]

there are limits on everything folks, even [insert principle you hold most dear]

Including, of course, the principle that "there are limits on everything"?

Re:it's interesting to see

[Brian Gordon]

I'm constantly frustrated by these exact issues on battlestar galactica. When the workers rebel in a classic Marx revolution, the stupid president just brushes them off, and never really addresses their concerns.. somehow the problem just sort of goes away and the workers happily go back to working dangerous, repetitive jobs 16 hours a day, every day for years with no weekends. Mhm. Also I hate how they constantly abuse the cylons.. I mean yeah they're the enemy but they're obviously intelligent and sentient and they're not even given basic human rights. A Six is currently shackled to the floor in one of their small cells. The humans call the cylons obscene caricatures of real people and refer to them as "mechanical" and "machines"... they're entirely biological and indistinguishable from humans, at least some of them. There's some serious xenophobia going on here and it's hard not to sympathize with the cylons, especially the Six is custody who's constantly told that she's a worthless pile of bolts.. that must be causing some serious psychological damage, and I can't help but keep that abuse in mind when watching the "light" parts of the episodes.. as if I'm supposed to sympathize with the humans? They're more vicious than the cylons..

Re:it's interesting to see

[jjohnson]

The producers are very much interested in not having BSG be a one-sided 'humans uber alles' series. I take it you're in the middle of the second season, where Cain's Six is being tortured and gangraped on the Pegasus. As the series continues, a lot of human decisions come back to the haunt them, and the Cylon perspective is explored.

Re:it's interesting to see

[AJWM]

I think you need to go watch the first episodes (the miniseries) over again.

They Cylons launched an unprovoked sneak attack and thoroughly nuked the twelve colonies, after a 40-year cease-fire. And you're saying the humans are more vicious?

Your name isn't Gaius Baltar, is it?

Re:it's interesting to see

[glwtta]

I mean yeah they're the enemy but they're obviously intelligent and sentient and they're not even given basic human rights.

The humans on BSG are deeply religious and believe that humanity is defined by a Gods-given soul, which a man-made machine cannot have - it's a pretty major part of the show, if a little unsubtle. Goes along with the whole theme of the cylons having a more "evolved" religion than the humans (by our Western standards, of course, where monotheism > highly ritualistic polytheism).

Of course, the cylons did also exterminate the human race, some people would hold a grudge.

Re:it's interesting to see

[peragrin]

You should ACTUALLY watch the show.

The workers's strike was eventually resolved by rotating jobs. The ore processor's got moved to other jobs in the fleet, and other people were brought in to fill in the gaps. Not idealistic but workable and it keeps people from getting bored and lazy in their work. It also makes the more stressful jobs easier to deal with.

It is how that episode finished up I do believe. Might have been the next.

Re:it's interesting to see

[erlehmann]

Your name isn't Gaius Baltar, is it?

Emmm, no. Or ... yes, i mean yes. Of course my name is ... what were you saying again ?
But, clearly, what I need is ... emm ... a nuclear ... warhead. I need a nuclear warhead, right.

Re:it's interesting to see

[LandDolphin]

Take it your not finished with the series. Else, you'd know that the humans sent a pilot over into the Cylons space that violated the treaty and provoked the attack.

Re:it's interesting to see

[HTH NE1]

Would that be the same Cylons who nuked and killed several billion humans from orbit? Well, you have to admit, it is the only way to be sure.

Re:it's interesting to see

[Comboman]

The humans on BSG are deeply religious and believe that humanity is defined by a Gods-given soul, which a man-made machine cannot have - it's a pretty major part of the show, if a little unsubtle.

I'd have to disagree slightly with that assessment. Most humans on BSG (at least the ones the show centers around) only show a token devotion to their Gods (if at all). Baltar is an atheist (at least at the start) as is Adama (he thinks Earth is a myth). Rosalind is a believer but is not above using religious posturing for her own political ends. The Cyclons on the other hand are unswervingly devoted to their God. I believe there's an intentional parallel with western secular 'Christians' and extremist Muslims.

Re:it's interesting to see

[AJWM]

That turns out to have been a toaster^WCylon pretending to be human to provide an excuse for the attack (a time honored tradition in military history).

There's no way the Cylons had the time to build up the force they had, and to conduct the necessary infiltration of Colonial defense infrastructure, were that not the case.

Besides, even if that were a human, don't you think nuking twelve planets is a bit of overreaction to one lone pilot incursion? That's like USSR launching WW-III because of Francis Gary Powers' U-2 incident. A bit vicious, don't you think?

Re:it's interesting to see

[Zak3056]

Even before the attack Baltar's Six, a.k.a. Caprica Six, snapped a newborn's neck just because she felt like it and could get away with it.

I actually read that as an act of mercy--instead of leaving the baby to whatever fate had in store for it (if it were lucky, incineration, if not, death from radiation) she ended it quickly.

Re:it's interesting to see

[idontgno]

The Cyclons on the other hand are unswervingly devoted to their God.

That's a generalization, and still wrong when there are only 12 personality basetypes to compare.

Specifically, the "Brother Cavil" model seems to be persistently atheist in all incarnations shown.

I believe there's an intentional parallel with western secular 'Christians' and extremist Muslims.

That's an easy assumption, but there's a practical inconsistency there: the Cylons are a functional nation-state complete with a high-tech standing army which the Colonials are in active war with. Extremist Islam has no such state. At least, not one which is actively at war with any nation of the West. So the comparison to any current situation is seriously flawed. If you focus on just the differences in religion and want to see a connection to behavior and interactions between the factions, you can certainly see it, but it's not cut and dried.

Re:it's interesting to see

[Remus Shepherd]

I'm on the opposite side of you in the question of how Cylons should be treated. They have proven themselves an existential threat to the human race, and they should be exterminated without pity or mercy. I was frustrated by the one episode (much later than where you apparently are) when they decide not to release a biological weapon that could wipe out the Cylons all at once. I'd press that button in a heartbeat, and I think any leader responsible for the safety of the human race would do the same.

Still, it's a good reflection on the series writers that they are able to evoke such complex and powerful quandries.

Re:it's interesting to see

[mabhatter654]

You'd think she could have replaced the workers with robots. They eat less and don't complain.

ducks...

Re:it's interesting to see

[Brian Gordon]

You should go back and watch Star Trek TNG, learn some starfleet ideals. Picard was absolutely right not to return Hugh with a disease to exterminate the Borg. Yes they were a threat to the human race, but genocide is never an acceptable solution. Would you wipe out a species to ensure your own survival? Murder? Starfleet wouldn't, and neither would I.. these are ideals worth dying for.

Re:it's interesting to see

[AJWM]

Any part of the reaction in excess of what was proportional to the provocation was the "unprovoked" part.

Killing the pilot (assuming it really was a human and not a Cylon ruse), maybe even bombing the base he (allegedly) launched from might have been considered provoked. Nuking billions of people on twelve planets was unprovoked.

If someone calls you an asshole and you whip out a gun and blow them away, no jury is going to be very sympathetic to the viewpoint that you were provoked, and the prosecutor will make a good case for first-degree murder and were just looking for an excuse to pull the trigger (why else were you carrying the gun in the first place?).

Of course, all this presupposes that it wasn't just a Cylon version of the Gleiwitz incident that Nazi Germany used as an excuse to invade Poland.

Re:it's interesting to see

[glwtta]

Most humans on BSG (at least the ones the show centers around) only show a token devotion to their Gods (if at all).

Some do, but I got the impression that's not very indicative of their society as a whole.

Baltar is an atheist (at least at the start) as is Adama (he thinks Earth is a myth)

Baltar is The Scientist archetype, so of course he's an atheist, it's the setup for his whole "unlikely prophet" arc (not terribly original, but it's a thing). At least I got the impression that his atheism was somewhat uncommon by their standards. Adama doesn't believe in prophecy (or even just that particular prophecy), I don't believe he was ever actually presented as not believing the whole Lords of Kobol thing (I could be wrong, I can't recall anything specific one way or the other).

Rosalind is a believer but is not above using religious posturing for her own political ends.

So? Her actions are entirely informed by prophecy at this point, doesn't get any more religious than that.

My main point was that their society, as a whole, is shown to be far more religious than ours. For one thing, they clearly have a state-endorsed (or enforced?) religion that informs much of their politics. The educated elite might be pretty secularized, but aren't they always?

I believe there's an intentional parallel with western secular 'Christians' and extremist Muslims.

I think that's pretty tenuous (and kinda simplistic if that was the actual intention). For one thing, the cylons' devotion is constantly contrasted with the ritual (and superstition) of the human practices. If the intention is for "us" - predominantly Christian Westerners - to identify with the BSG humans, then why have them be "stuck" in polytheism (there's actually hints of "monolatry" to it, kinda akin to later Roman cultic worship), while the cylons develop theistically along lines very similar to our own culture? And it's not like large segments of Western society aren't every bit as religious as any Muslim - religious belief and fanatical "extremism" aren't exactly the same thing.

Basically what I mean is, is it just a coincidence that the cylons have a more developed, and nuanced, theosophy than the humans?

For that matter, the vast majority of the BSG humans wouldn't have a problem exterminating the cylons on religious grounds (according to their religion the cylons aren't sentient). While the cylons, ostensibly, are only hunting the humans because they perceive them as a threat. In fact, it's the overtly religious models that seem to come by some misgivings about exterminating the whole species.

Actually, I guess when I say "the cylons" I pretty much mean "the Sixes", I don't believe the others were shown to embrace those views quite as wholeheartedly. But still, while they are deeply religious, I wouldn't say their religion is shown as fundamentalist.

I guess I'm just hoping it's a little more complex than "fundamentalism == extremism == bad", cause, I mean, duh...

Re:it's interesting to see

[ianare]

Would you wipe out a species to ensure your own survival? If that species was bent on exterminating mine, yes, I would. And so would any other living thing, for that matter. Genocide and murder are certainly not acceptable in normal times, but when fighting for survival, all bets are off.

Re:it's interesting to see

[gfxguy]

I agree with ianare... if you are given the choice of "We exterminate them, or they will exterminate us." Then I don't think the decision is very hard... I'm not going to allow my species to be exterminated just to keep the moral high ground.

Re:it's interesting to see

[Herschel Cohen]

Do not be so certain. A real case in Texas, that is different in that no names were called. I believe it was around Halloween, but years ago, when two Japanese students approached a house seeking directions. They were perceived as a threat and shot to death. From my memory, the individual did not even stand trial. Unsurprisingly, this remains a sore point in Japanese-American (U.S.) relations, to which most of the population of the latter remains blissfully unaware.

The nearest link I found was the second footnote (pasted below) in this article that pertains to a different topic: http://www.pcpages.com/salhq/lawreview.htm

2]. Japan Economic Newswire, U.S. Jury Clears Man Who Shot Japanese Student, KYODO NEWS SERVICE, May 24, 1993; Lori Sharn, Violence Shoots Holes in USA's Tourist Image, USA TODAY, Sept. 9, 1993, at 2A.

However, it differs from my memory, because it mentions a trial and I remember it as a pair.

Re:it's interesting to see

[Danse]

The Battlestar event is much more the equivalent of the U2 flying across the USSR that was mentioned previously... a provocative act, but not the opening shot of a war. Especially when you consider that the Cylons were already spying and sabotaging the human worlds.

Re:it's interesting to see

[Faizdog]

Where do you draw the line for survival though? Is it your species, your nation, your state, your county, town or neighborhood? I could understand these issues at the macro level, i.e. survival of the species. And it's absurd at the micro level, i.e. I will kill everyone in the next town over even though we live in the same county. Where is the line in the middle though? What if the US was in a war against China to the bitter end? The human species will survive, but is genocide still allowed to protect your nation/race? That's already happened in Africa, and we pretty much agree on a world-wide scale that was atrocious.

Good sci fi makes you think about the real world, and I'm not quite sure where that line falls.

Re:it's interesting to see

[EllisDees]

Yes, but the cylons had also been in human space for a long time. If Tigh is indeed a cylon and has been in the military for most of his life, the cylons have been in human territory for at least that long.

Re:it's interesting to see

[Evil Pete]

In "The Eye of Jupiter" episode (Season 3) when Three sends raiders to the planet surface Adama threatens to nuke the entire continent. The Six, Eight, Five etc tell Three to pull back but she recalls all but one of the ships. Three says to the others when Adama steps back from attack : "It is *never* about one ship".

Re:it's interesting to see

[Saxerman]

Here's the wikipedia article on the shooting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshihiro_Hattori It was in Louisiana back in 1992. There were two trials, one criminal and one civil.

The [criminal] trial lasted seven days. After the jurors deliberated for three and a quarter hours, Peairs was acquitted under Louisiana's "Kill the burglar" statute.

And religion?

[webword]

Yes, a little offtopic but if you're going to talk
about politics and law, why not religion too, right?
The image is slick...

Battlestar Galactica Last Supper

Re:And religion?

[glwtta]

Thanks, I was having trouble placing one of the most iconic images in the world.

What I'd Like...

[Nom du Keyboard]

What I'd like to see is more details of how and why the Cylons broke free of Human control in the first place. Not what they did afterwards. How did the 12 Colonies screw up so badly with their robots from the beginning?

Re:What I'd Like...

[squiggleslash]

There was a bug in Service Pack 7, the rest is history.

Re:What I'd Like...

[downix]

In the original series, (where the Cylons broke free of their original reptilic masters) a man named Count Iblis corrupted the central control computer, now called the Supreme Cylon, which in turn directly reprogrammed the IL-series Commanders (who from then on had a voice identical to Iblis), which in turn reprogrammed the IL-series humanoids and IL-series Centurions. Now, how much of this will be taken into the new show I have no idea, but it was an interesting take.

The best science fiction

[elrous0]

The best science fiction is always used as a tool to explore the current issues of the day. Whether it's aliens subbing for commies in the 50's, or cylons standing in for terrorists in the 1st season of the new Battlestar Galactica, using science fiction always lets you take a step back from the subject and explore it indirectly in a way that you never could if you made a show that deal with it directly.

Re:The best science fiction

[PrescriptionWarning]

So what is the significance of when the Cylons occupy the new home planet in season 2.5 (or 3?), and the humans are carrying out suicide bombings and other such guerilla tactics? It seems as if the Cylons are actually the big governmental organization and the humans are the terrorists...

Re:The best science fiction

[imgod2u]

Exactly. Keep in mind that fiction does not need to be restrained by a rigid one-to-one mapping. It need not be cylons = terrorists, human = good guys.

In fact, the Cyclon occupation was an incredibly clever (IMO) portrayal of modern-day Iraq and the tension and mentality (on both sides) of an occupation. The Cyclons apparently have this new religion (monotheistic one stressing love and forgiveness) and its teachings stop them from just wiping out the humans on the colony. This is the role of the United States in Iraq currently. The humans are the insurgents. Some have gone along and accepted Cylon rule (and even helped them) while others continue fighting. The morality and view from both sides is explored.

The primary of which being suicide bombing. It wasn't a "oh noes! suicide bombing is bad and cannot be excused" mentality. It tread a fine line and explored the motivations behind such tactics. The desperation, the hatred, etc. It also explored how in resorting to such tactics, the humans were losing their humanity and that the cost of fighting was just too high in those cases.

The show is a wonderful allegory of modern day and has really portrayed its modern day equivalents in a light I had not thought anyone dared.

Re:That's all very well....

[lancelotlink]

I realize Dirk Benedict is a very handsome man, but I think it would have been a little inappropriate. Oh, wait...

yes! exactly!

[circletimessquare]

moderation in everything... including moderation ;-)

Re:yes! exactly!

[Kjella]

moderation in everything... including moderation ;-) Well, it's capped at -1 and +5... wait, are we talking about the same thing?

Re:yes! exactly!

[BForrester]

Your motto is "I was just going to post that, but you beat me to it?"

You'll never make first post with a mantra like that. :D

Re:yes! exactly!

[notnAP]

I was going to mod you up, but you talked me out of it.

what i found kinda interesting ...

[erlehmann]

... is that the only character that follows clear moral principles is karl "helo" agathon; every other character on the show has obvious flaws (which are necessary to create tension), but he is the only one that does what he deems right without doubt.

i like the message transported through this: in the end, there are no heroes.

Re:what i found kinda interesting ...

[glwtta]

is that the only character that follows clear moral principles is karl "helo" agathon; every other character on the show has obvious flaws

Isn't that the classic tragic flaw? Uncompromising goodness usually ends badly for the hero.

(sidenote for non-classics geeks: his name is a nod to this too, agathos means "good" in Greek, often in the sense of "noble" or "virtuous")

Is BSG still relevant?

[lelitsch]

I know a number of fans, but quite frankly, I haven't really watched it since the end of season 2. Yes, the beginning of season 3 got more into the moral issues of occupation and resistance, but it did it at the expense of storyline, internal consistency, and even believability. I mean for crying out loud, who brought 20th century trucks from Old Caprica to New Caprica?

But the main reason I started to first TiVo instead of watching, then not watching the episodes on my TiVo, and finally not taping them at all, is that in my opinion, the quality of the writing went way down. Season 1 and 2 had terrific, well timed dialog, Season 3 and later descended to shouting, ranting, and screaming.

Re:Is BSG still relevant?

[d34thm0nk3y]

Season 1 and 2 had terrific, well timed dialog, Season 3 and later descended to shouting, ranting, and screaming.

Well, hiding from killer robots bent on extermination for several years would do that to anyone.

Interesting

[Cedric Tsui]

I stopped watching the series after it stopped being about running away from the hoard of robots trying to murder everyone. I'm not terribly interested in complicated relationships. That's what soap operas are for.

Briefly in the early part of the series, things started running out. Simple commodities like whiskey and playing cards. I was upset when that issue disappeared. A random assortment of military and civilian vessels might be well stocked, but they certainly would not have a full assortment of manufacturing capabilities. Especially for specialized good like pharmaceuticals. They eventually addressed a shortage of antibiotics, and the development of a black market. But realistically. They would be able to produce no antibiotics at all.

And really. Why would a passenger vessel capable of hopping between stars in the blink of an eye have manufacturing centers? Or fuel refineries? Or food production capabilities.
I was hoping to see Cloud Nine, the dome greenhouse like ship be converted into agricultural land.

I know these issues aren't nearly as exciting as -getting into bed with your imaginary genocidal robot-

Think about it though. The main goals following some sort of catastrophe like this would be.
1.Stability: Stop whatever killed everyone from still doing so. Stop the panic. Get people working together instead of looting from each other.
2.Preserving technology, infrastructure and supplies. If you've got something that works, you can't replace it. Do whatever you can to keep it working.
3.Rebuilding infrastructure. Need to grow food to live once the supplies run out. Can we built farming workers? No. Can we build tractors? No. Can we build shovels? Yes. Start from there, and learn what we need to make it work.

4.(optional) Preserving knowledge. After everyone's farming, hunting, gathering, or whatever is needed to stay alive. We realize that we still know how to make all sorts of advanced technology, even if we don't have a large enough society to make use of it. It would be valuable to archive all the knowledge so that it is accessible after the last battery runs out of juice.

just my thoughts...

Re:Interesting

[Shotgun]

2.Preserving technology, infrastructure and supplies. If you've got something that works, you can't replace it. Do whatever you can to keep it working.

That's what I thought of during the Razor episode, when the Admiral wanted to strip the civilian ships and go fight a guerilla war. What the hell, you idiot? You have working ships and people that can operate them. Those people being of a very small set of remaining humans. Why would you just throw either away. Program the ones with FTL spools that are not compatible with the Pegasus jump in next to a base ship and set off a nuclear device. Outfit them with scanning equipment and have them run scouting missions. Mount weapons on them and have one more gun in the battle. Train the people to be soldiers.

In fact, I find the whole series permeated with the idea that there are 'civilians', helpless and incapable of self defence, and the 'military' who must provide all the needs for the civilians. And, somehow, this is as it should be. Sorry, but this is an all out WAR. Get your ass in gear and learn to shoot. Mount a gun on your ship and lend a hand. Human resources is still any organizations greatest asset. They built one additional ship the whole series. It was used for a few episodes and quickly forgotten. What the hell did everyone else do during all those months in space?

Re:Interesting

[benjin]

My friend and I have actually had this same conversation turn into a full blow argument! We both think that your assumptions about the need to show what happens when everything runs out and what the priority of needs are but I diverge from the agreement about the point when its assumed that they can no longer manufacture things. Here's what I was thinking as best I can put into a short reply.

Somebody brought up the fact that a Battlestar is the equivalent to an aircraft carrier. I would say this is a good start but above that, they need to be a first landing and beach head vessel. That means all the equipment and know how to land an assault on a planet and keep a beach head maintained possibly far enough into space to make resupply hard if not impossible. My friend's counter argument to this was that the Battle Star Galactica was being decommissioned and was probably stripped of most of its heavy arms before the first Cylon assault took place.

The biggest problem I had with this show was in season two when they were on the planet. They lived like shit and I thought the writers did a bad job of showing the progression of tech that would have been second nature by then. The majority of people live in little tents and bivouacked together like it was 1944. This was a great way to relate to a general audience because I think it made their world more tangible but lets be honest, If they can make Battle Stars and Cylons (even the first gen models) then they could manufacture almost on a personal level. It's easy to assume that they had the tech for "printing" cement structures down. We are dabbling in it now and we can't even make it to the moon yet reliably.

With the assumption that they have at least a semi-sophisticated manufacturing process you could think that they would have fabricators on all their ships with enough raw elements to process into basic needs like clothing, contact lenses/glasses, tables etc... The raw elements can be stripped from multiple places as demonstrated at the recycling boiling plants that can be installed at places like chicken farms to strip the organic waste and extra bits into light crude oil and pure carbon and graphene. It's pretty cool to see a bone carcass go through and come out as calcium dust, refined oil, and water. These are then drummed up and sold in bulk to places like tire plants that need the raw materials.

The counter argument was that why would you have a house manufacturing machine on a Battle Star? They never would need it because everyone lives on the ship. Which is why I brought up the whole beach head thing. Forget laying sand bags. Just have it lay down a 4 foot wall with holes built for gunnery posts. it would take half a day and could be cement strong. Not to mention barracks and bunkers. Basically fortification 101 would make it a necessity to carry a few of these machines on a carrier.

The biggest split in conversation happened over food and medicine. Obviously the Battle Star isn't equipped for food production but why not. MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) could be made on the ship with protein bars and so forth like they were doing at the end of the 3rd season from the Algae but it can be taken one step further and medicine can be done the same way. Why wouldn't a deep space city in the sky type of craft have at least the basic cultures for antibiotics and the like in cold storage? Lord knows a battle ship would never need more medicine than they shipped out with.

And the final nail in the coffin is that every Battle Star could have all the city planning and agricultural/ infrastructure information with them at all times. How many gigs of info would basic city and agriculture plans take up? 5-10 TB... Maybe! That would include things like processing machines and power generation. If they had the tech to make artificial intelligence I think they had big enough drives to put a few extra "just incases" on some free space. Not to mention the on-ship Library that a Aircraft carrier has that might have been beefed u

Re:Interesting

[jollyreaper]

Briefly in the early part of the series, things started running out. Simple commodities like whiskey and playing cards. I was upset when that issue disappeared. A random assortment of military and civilian vessels might be well stocked, but they certainly would not have a full assortment of manufacturing capabilities. Especially for specialized good like pharmaceuticals. They eventually addressed a shortage of antibiotics, and the development of a black market. But realistically. They would be able to produce no antibiotics at all.

And really. Why would a passenger vessel capable of hopping between stars in the blink of an eye have manufacturing centers? Or fuel refineries? Or food production capabilities.
I was hoping to see Cloud Nine, the dome greenhouse like ship be converted into agricultural land.

I know these issues aren't nearly as exciting as -getting into bed with your imaginary genocidal robot It's because they never thought the whole premise through. According to the show, the twelve colonies were all in one system. Why would there even be a need for interstellar transit if you never had to go further than the next planet over? The analogy here would be coastal lighters used to flee across the Pacific, only the distances are thousands of times greater. How are they carrying enough fuel and consumables? Why would they even have that range to begin with? It would be as if my little commuter Cessna just so happened to be capable of intercontinental flight, even though I only used it to go to the next state. Hell, the space shuttle could probably be rigged to reach Mars if they used those weird low-energy transfer orbits (stick an ion drive and reaction mass in the cargo bay) but the trip would take years and years and the consumables would run out in less than a month.

What probably would have been a smarter way to go with the series is to assume that the Cylons are like the Japanese in WWII, strong striking force but incapable of keeping up rapid production. Make up some sort of applied techno-babble that says they can crank out raiders and centurions but the AI's in their basestars take ages to nurture and grow. So they could not take the humans in a stand-up fight, thus requiring the decapitation strike. They knew they could not get all of the human colonies at once, they tried to get the biggest ones and take out the bulk of the fleet, then would mop up the rest at their leisure. Also, if they spread the main colonies among several star systems with further splinter settlements, then there's some real drama. Assume the colonies are spread between four major star systems. Ok, the Cylon fleet is divided into four task groups, they use the trickery to get through the defenses. Galactica manages an escape. Info trickling in later shows that it was not just the one system that was hit, all four are gone. The crew goes from thinking they're going to meet up with fleet elements for a counter-attack to realizing they're most of what's left of the fleet. They then realize that the Cylons are going to begin a systematic sweep of the outer colonies, the ones founded after the big 12. So the first season is then about trying to get there before the Cylons, building up the rag-tag fleet. From there they can have the wangst about whether the Cylons are still shitfire hot about genocide, if they have second thoughts, etc etc.

I have no idea where they're planning on ending the current series but I think making the Cylons human was a mistake. The whole feel of the original was fighting against an enemy so unfeeling, so remorseless that they may as well be a force of nature. Yeah, they forgot about that and went silly early on but that's still what I felt was the core of the show. You can get the soap opera relationship strife wangst anywhere. The emotional trauma I want to see is related to the premise of the show, how people are reacting and cracking under the pressure, not Melrose Space crap.

Re:BG got annoying when it became...

[dctoastman]

Science Fiction uses fantastic elements as window dressing to cover up the fact that they are trying to get you to think about the human element. All good science fiction (Star Trek, Asimov, BSG, B5, Firefly (definitely not all of it, but examples)) is less about the science and more about the people and the choices they make.

You're looking for Space Opera (Star Wars and its ilk), two doors down on your left.

And also, who's to say that it is meant to be USA specific. Maybe you are just extrapolating based on what you are seeing. Like how many people see the conflict between God/Nature vs. Man in Moby Dick when Melville had stated it's just a story about a whale.
In which case, that makes BSG excellent science fiction.

To see ourselves as others see us

[Serious Callers Only]

I think the series is scripted to provoke exactly the kind of conflictual emotions you have mentioned - it's an old trick and it works well for retaining viewer interest. The interesting thing is that you feel the writers haven't considered these issues - I don't think they show the humans in an uncritical light at all, in fact many of the worst acts in the war are committed by humans (rape, torture, etc), I think you're feeling exactly what you're supposed to feel - i.e. 'Hang on a minute, that's not right'.

By showing both sides of the conflict, they're shedding light on the tricks we play on ourselves to make warfare acceptable. Rather cleverly, they've cast the robots as more human than the humans in many ways (religious, questioning, constantly seeking resolution), and difficult for the viewer to tell apart from humans. People are being tortured right now in the name of the US and the UK, so I think it's rather apposite that they show humans trying to justify this by dehumanising their enemy - now perhaps they still show torture working sometimes, and they fail to show the effects it has on the torturers in terms of twisting their moral sense, but torture does happen in most wars, and they're right to show it. Nicknames like toaster etc are very common in times of war (see names for Germans or Japanese used in the states in WWII)- it's the first step in preparing to wipe out an enemy; suppress empathy. I'm sure you could find people who applauded the fire-bombing of Dresden, because of being dehumanised by war.

Now the scripts are far from perfect, and in many ways it's a standard sci-fi pot-boiler, but there are elements which are definitely interesting, and I don't believe for a minute that the writers are not aware of the buttons they are pushing, or that they somehow feel all the actions of the humans are justified. Much time is spent discussing whether in fact these actions are correct or acceptable in any circumstances, and the introduction of several cylon characters into the human fleet is designed to bring home this distinction - personally I don't agree with their justification of torture, but it's not as naive as something like '24' at least, where jack gets out his pistol and whacks evil super-villains on the head with it a few times till they give up the secret code to their nuclear weapons. They've also played with insurrection and when/whether it is justified, which I thought was a very useful topic to examine right now in the west.

I agree the politics can be caricatured at points, though the revolt of workers was not unusual in its outcome - If you look at the history of industrialised nations, you will see many cases of exactly this behaviour - the 1848 revolutions in several other european countries fizzled out before they got going, and the earlier frame breakers/luddites have even become a byword for stupidity, even though their grievances were real and their movement brutally repressed. When workers are not organised or allied with the middle classes they're going to have a hard time fighting a heavily armed government determined to impose order, and often the best option is to give up and bide their time.

I just wish they based more of their scripts on historical events, to give it a bit more grit and a bit less of the trite pablum which passes for political discourse in America at the moment - at times I felt like I was watching the first episode of the West wing, particularly when that president opens her mouth, or they had that journalist woman being defused by being allowed access to the military (a nice idea, and stylistically quite fun with the grainy footage, but again came out a bit trite). I finally got bored with it all after the 3rd series, and gave up on it - it turned into a soap opera, and not a very good one, and the mixture of shallow political/social analysis and faith was just too much for me. There's a lot there that could be good, but unfortunately they went for the easy options too many times, and felt it necessary to add lots of trite filler and romantic stuffing that didn't really belong. But perhaps that's why they didn't get cancelled and Firefly did.

I don't feel the show is encouraging xenophobia though, quite the opposite, it's encouraging you to think about it.

The majority practice hypocrisy

[gobbo]

True story: back during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, I had lunch with a well educated, mild-mannered, drug and gun running mujehaddin working in India. When he found out I wasn't going to be a customer, he relaxed and we talked religion. He asserted that there were more Buddhists than any other religion. I scoffed and began quoting the other statistics in this thread, but he replied:

"Few christians are actually christian, and few muslims are actually muslim... but most buddhists are actually buddhist."

preachy shows

[jollyreaper]

A lot of people complain about shows getting preachy and derailing the quality of the entertainment to make some sort of moral statement. Some people consider any amount of preaching derailment, no matter the quality. I don't mind preaching but I do hate it when that sort of thing knocks the show off the rails. Derailment comes in the form of making people out of character, contorting the internal logic of the show to bring the issue up, and knocking the flow of the overall series off the tracks.

Galactica has been guilty of all of those. I gave up when they decided to do the whole Iraq occupation thing. For starters, settling on a planet makes no sense when your enemy is space-borne and can hunt you down. That violates sound military doctrine in the context of the show. Second, how do you apply terror tactics against an enemy who is effectively immortal? While somewhat cheesy and seemingly a wasted effort, suicide bomber Cylons make sense in that they are immortal and will come back after they die. It would still seem more sensible for them to conduct a larger sabotage given how far they've infiltrated into the Colonial military. But for humans to suicide attack Cylons? Again, it's one thing if you're talking about a Viper pilot pressing home an attack against a basestar. Losing a capital ship should hurt, they don't grow on trees, and such a move could provide the opening for the Galactica to escape a sticky situation. But strapping on a dynamite vest and walking into a Cylon bar? "Bugger, I got blown up. Well, let me crawl out of this tank, put on something slutty and we can resume at some other bar."

None of that made any context within the confines of the show, the writers just wanted to do something they saw in the headlines. Yawn. Might as well throw in stem cell research, teen pregnancy, female genital mutilation, and rants about Vista.

Re:preachy shows

[Grishnakh]

Galactica has been guilty of all of those. I gave up when they decided to do the whole Iraq occupation thing. For starters, settling on a planet makes no sense when your enemy is space-borne and can hunt you down. That violates sound military doctrine in the context of the show.

Oh, please. The humans weren't under military command, they had just elected a new civilian president, because he promised them he'd allow them to settle on this planet. They had been on the run for maybe 2 years at this point, and were weary of running. They thought this planet was undetectable by the Cylons (and they were correct, except for the radiation emitted by the nuclear blast).

In hindsight, it was a terrible decision, but it makes sense how people in that situation could have made it in the democratic system which they had. I think that was the show's point: giving people the power to elect their leaders doesn't always produce the smartest or most optimal results. In fact, it can produce disastrous results when the people elect politicians based on their pandering campaign promises which go against the advice of experts.

But for humans to suicide attack Cylons?

It's been a while since I saw the occupation episodes, but IIRC the idea wasn't really to blow up Cylons, since they obviously just resurrect in a couple of days. The idea was to 1) kill Baltar, who the humans saw as complicit with the Cylons, and 2) kill any other humans, seen as traitors, who were helping the Cylons (namely the New Caprica Police). Remember, at this point, the Cylons had decided not to continue with genocide, and were now trying to rule over the remaining humans for some reason instead of just killing them all. The insurgents were attempting to sabotage this effort.

Re:Hippies Ruined This Show

[demented]

I don't know whether they are hippies or not, but they did display something that could even be seen as borderline stupidity or naivety regarding such a strong theme of bare survival of the last remains of a human kind.

Nobody seems to notice a simple fact: there were 12bn people at the beginning of the show, and in couple of minutes after that they were down to mere 40+ thousand. It's about 0.0004 percent - it's not even a statistical error, it's a rounding error! And it's the second war with Cylons who very effectively showed to all that they are into exterminating the human species. You cannot make peace treaties with somebody who annihilated your entire species - you fight until one side does not exist anymore. Period.

The normal thing any government would do in situations far, far, far, far, far... better than that is to implement marshal law through and through. And here we have some idiots who are trying to still stick to the 'ole democracy principles' like it's some scholarly issue?! The workers' strike? At the only facility that produces fuel for all the ships, including fighters (in other words, the most important element in human survival there)? Facilities like this are part of the military in such conditions - the workers there are effectively soldiers under command in war - disobeying orders in wartime situations by the soldiers usually ends up by putting ringleaders against the wall in front of the firing squad, if not all of them. And soldier ('Halo' Agathon) who intentionally sabotages the activity that would bring the ultimate victory in this war of annihilation, even it could be seen as genocidal by some, is not a brave and moral individual - he is a traitor of his own species, and should be punished as any traitor in war was before him! Human rights and morals in situations like that are voluntarily resigned because they can (and usually do) prevent the system to function optimally! It's not about way of life, or this or that religion or political idea prevailing, it's about bare survival of an entire species!

After all, there's an old saying: if democracy works, why doesn't military implement it within its own ranks...

That's real life. BSG isn't even a good description of reality in fictional universe. I don't dispute that authors of the show wanted to raise some genuine questions, but they did it in a totally wrong setup, which only made these questions less genuine and more artificial, and whole show barely watchable.